Why MYSTERIES? Because that is the genre I read. Why PARADISE? Because that is where I live.
Among other things, this blog, the result of a 2008 New Year's resolution, will act as a record of books that I've read, and random thoughts.

Review: AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL, Agatha Christie

“Even at Bertram’s, thought Miss Marple, interesting things could
happen...” Impeccable service and grandeur at the hotel, but Miss Marple
didn’t anticipate the eccentric guest who went to the airport on the
wrong day…

One of Miss Marple’s few outings from St Mary
Mead, this time she’s holidaying in London, when a certain eccentric
guest sets off a violent chain of events.

Bertram’s, the fictional hotel featured in the story, is thought to
have been inspired by Brown’s Hotel in London, a favourite haunt of
Agatha Christie, but could also have been based on the Mayfair Hotel,
Fleming’s.

The story was adapted for TV starring Joan Hickson in 1987. BBC Radio
4 dramatised the story in 2004 and it was adapted again for TV in 2007,
this time featuring Geraldine McEwan as the elderly sleuth, and
included substantial changes from the novel.

My Take
I have seen the TV versions of the novel several times and in fact did wonder whether it was worth my while reading the book, it being next in my list for the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

I hadn't realised how much the story had been modified for television, with characters left out, and others inserted. There are a number of plot changes.

The main import of the novel is that nothing at Bertram's Hotel in 1955 is as its seems: all is a facade, from the appearance of the hotel, to the people who visit it, to the people who run it. Miss Marple realises that it is a mistake to try to step back to pre-war days. In fact the Bertram's Hotel she remembers is much older than that, a memory from her childhood.

The story also illustrates Agatha Christie's conviction of the prevalence of organised crime rings that underpinned facades of normality. The police inspector who carries out the investigation into Bertram's shady dealings and the disappearance of Canon Pennyfather is an avuncular old chap who has seen it all, but he is not the same as the bouncing lad of the television production. Nor is there the romantic element that TV gave us for public consumption.

I don't think Miss Marple comes out of thebook particularly well - Christie portrays her as an old busybody who eavesdrops on people's conversations when she can. On the other hand she does recognise evil when she sees it and she demonstrates an understanding of the foibles of the elderly. For example she knows that Canon Pennyfather had mistaken the day he should be flying to Lucerne, and when he returns to Bertram's Hotel, she instantly knows he is not the person she saw descending the stairs at 3 am.